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Clarence Hightower
Clarence Hightower: 30 years old; b. 1883; a well groomed white man with sandy blonde hair and blue eyes. People have always liked you but are leery of you. Your relationships are intense and brief. You have a strong reputation as on e of the finest art and antiquities dealers in New York City. To another clientèle, you have an equal reputation as one of the smoothest fences and brokers in the city. Charles Winfred Hightower and Beulah Otto Hightower: Your father, Charles Winfred Hightower, is one of J.P.Morgan's acclaimed captains of industry. He was a financier for J. P. Morgan & Co. and now sets on the board of U.S. Steel. He is a cold, distant man who never approved of you. Your mother, Beulah Otto, is a drunk and absent follower of fads and fashions. Clarence Hightower's story: You make up the truth. You NEVER tell the whole truth and invent truth at all times. High School Experience: You were kicked out of Brearley, Collegiate, Dalton and Trinity in New York City, and Woodhouse Grove in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England (for gambling, poor behavior, lack of discipline and fights). You finished high school at Horace Mann in Riverdale, Bronx, while living with your aunt (who you hated, but never saw). While in Trinity, you got a young woman pregnant. Your family paid her off. Collegiate Experience: You were kicked out of #Brown (you got into a duel with a fellow student, who you shot. The injury was a light shoulder wound, but he threatened to press charges until your family intervened), #Penn (for "poor behavior," but really for sleeping with the dean of humanities' daughter), #Cambridge (were you got another woman pregnant, but convinced her to get an abortion at considerable personal expense; afterward, the silly thing attempted suicide and the college and both of your families kept it quiet),and #ale (you were arrested for chasing a guy down the street in New Haven. When in court, you stressed that it wasn't loaded.) You finished at Dartmouth with a degree in archeology (but you also majored in anthropology and art history). After Dartmouth, you traveled to southern Egypt on an archeology expedition. You found the work tedious, dirty and dull, and left after a week. You made many connections and bought a bunch of Egyptian artifacts from the black market. You went back to New York and sold them at an incredible profit. Your antiquities trade had started. Travels to Europe and Central America: On a subsequent trip to Paris, you met many of the young demimonde painters and quickly discovered who was considered good and/or great. You bought many paintings cheaply, obsessed with the new. Your art and antiquities business flourished. You branched out to Meso-American antiquities and established contacts with members of the United Fruit Company who provided you with a constant stream of cheap contraband. On one of your trips to Paris, you got into a bar fight and was almost killed in a later ambush. A young American photographer named Colin Mallery saved your life. You became fast friends. Years later, after Colin missed an appointment with you at a cafe in Milan, you found him in his apartment, bleeding heavily. You took him to a private doctor who you paid to stay quiet. In Colin's apartment were many field rifles and weaponry. On a whim, on Colin's recovery bed, you told him that you could "use a man like him; a man who could fight and stand against the evils of the world." Judging from his books lying around his room, you told him that you had close connections to various labor movements, socialists and anarchists. You didn't have those connections, but quickly found people who did (a few former classmates) and offered to act as a go-between. You guessed that two of your contacts are agent provocateurs for the U.S. Secret Service and various international corporations. You told the go-betweens you knew who they were working for, and told them you were on their side. Since then, you have passed three jobs to Colin; you suspect that two of the jobs were actually for the U.S. and/or the United Fruit Company. On a trip to Guatemala, you ended up in the middle of a revolutionary fire-fight. You would have died if not for the help of a grizzled mulatto named "Madman" Madsen. You hired "Madman" as your personal ship captain, and you, he and Colin have been through several adventures. A year later, "Madman" caught a fever and you hired a personal nurse to revive him to health. Six years ago, your father cut you off from the family money. He was upset at the scandal you caused when you punched a prominent Congressman after he publicly accused you of sleeping with his wife. You were sleeping with his young wife, but the man crossed the line and deserved to be reprimanded. Since then, you've been living on your salary, which is well under y our expenses. To make more money, you brokered a munitions deal with a group of anarchists, but you never had any munitions. The anarchists attempted to take your life. You got away, but they continue to hunt you. They have made two attempts on your life and have ransacked your shop with a homemade gasoline bomb. You want to tell Colin or "Madman" but you worry that both have anarchist leanings, so you told them the attempts were because of Austrian spies. You hired a couple of detectives from the Pinkertons to go after the ana rchists but couldn't afford it and your father wouldn't financially support you. You informed the Secret Service that you discovered a plot by the anarchists to blow up the White House and they are looking into it. You also brokered a money laundering deal with the Five Point gang. Since then, you've been scheming deals throughout the city, with police, politicians and gangsters. Association with the Seven: It is known that Clarence was the original owner of The Mask, and that it was he who brought it to Beatrice Emerson. Betsy Brooks; Jehosephat Blim; Stephen Kilbride; Hoyt Lowe Disappearance: place holder